Cause At Heart A Former Communist Remembers

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Cause at Heart: A Former Communist Remembers

Author : Junius Irving Scales
Publisher : Plunkett Lake Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Cause at Heart: A Former Communist Remembers by : Junius Irving Scales

Download or read book Cause at Heart: A Former Communist Remembers written by Junius Irving Scales and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-17 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Born in 1920 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Junius Scales, whose great-uncle had been governor of the state, grew up in the privileged environment of his family’s estate. The only black people he knew were the servants. Wanting to improve the lot of workers, mainly African-American, he joined the Communist Party in 1939 while at the University of North Carolina, seeing in the Party an opportunity to right the wrongs done to blacks and poor working people. Scales rose quickly within the Party to coordinate civil rights and labor organizing activities in several Southern states. He went underground when Party leaders were trailed and harassed by federal authorities. In 1954, FBI agents arrested Scales in Memphis for violation of the Smith Act of 1940. The only American convicted solely for being a member of the Communist Party, Scales would serve 15 months in prison before his 6-year sentence was commuted by President Kennedy in 1962. Cause at Heart follows Scales from his privileged southern upbringing through the awakening of his social conscience, his civil- and labor-rights work for the Party across the South, his arrest and trials, his disillusionment with the Party, and his time in prison. In a new afterword, Barbara Scales, who was 10 years old when her father went to prison, recounts what it was like to be Junius Scales’ daughter. “It is the calm, even voice of Junius Scales we hear in Cause at Heart... this moving and memorable document... It is the voice of a decent, idealistic man who spent 18 years of his life in the Communist Party... And we don’t hear a false note: he is telling us the truth, as he reveals his illusions and delusions, his weaknesses and his strengths, his passionate belief in his party and the Soviet Union, and all the nagging doubts as well. He spares us nothing... Cause at Heart is an intelligent, rock honest... memoir, an interesting document that helps to explain in no small measure the tragic attraction the strange and hydra-headed American Communist Party held for the many decent human beings who passed through its revolving doors.” — William Herrick, The New York Times “Scales’s political life... is beautifully described in this well written book. His scenes of prison life alone — where he won respect from his fellow inmates and jailers alike — make remarkable reading.” — Monthly Review “Compelling reading, especially the discussions of Scales’s arrest, trials, and prison experience, interwoven, as they are, with his reevaluation of the Party.” — Journal of American History “An important and often moving account of the Communist Party’s role in labor organizing and civil rights activities in the South during the 1940s... [Scales’] memoir succeeds in capturing the hope and enthusiastic dedication that motivated him and many of his compatriots... the story of one individual’s unending quest on behalf of human decency and justice.” — Patricia Sullivan, Southern Changes “An engrossing saga.” — Michal R. Belknap, The Georgia Historical Quarterly “A book of unique perception and value. It is must reading for anyone interested in the era of Joseph McCarthy.” — Choice

Post-Cold War Revelations and the American Communist Party

Author : Vernon L. Pedersen
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1350135763
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Post-Cold War Revelations and the American Communist Party by : Vernon L. Pedersen

Download or read book Post-Cold War Revelations and the American Communist Party written by Vernon L. Pedersen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Of all the 'third party' movements in American history, none have been as controversial as the Communist Party of the United States of America. Although denounced as a tool of the Soviet Union, accused of espionage and charged with advocating the revolutionary overthrow of the American government, before WWII it had been an accepted part of the political landscape. This collection offers an intriguing insight into this controversial political party in light of the Moscow archives that were made accessible after the end of the Cold War. This collection of original essays explores new aspects in the history of American Communism, drawing on a range of documents from Moscow and Eastern Europe. Examining traditional subjects in the light of new evidence, the essays cover a range of topics including party leaders, espionage, campaigns against racism, the Spanish Civil War, communism and gender, the fate of members after the McCarthy era and ways in which Communists became Anti-Communists.

War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War

Author : David R. McCann
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317452410
Total Pages : 485 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (174 download)

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Book Synopsis War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War by : David R. McCann

Download or read book War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the Peloponnesian War written by David R. McCann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparison of the cultural and political/institutional dimensions of war's impact on Greece during the Peloponnesian War, and the United States and the two Koreas, North and South, during the Korean War. It demonstrates the many underlying similarities between the two wars.

American Labor and the Cold War

Author : Robert Cherny
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 0813555051
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (135 download)

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Book Synopsis American Labor and the Cold War by : Robert Cherny

Download or read book American Labor and the Cold War written by Robert Cherny and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2004-07-29 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American labor movement seemed poised on the threshold of unparalleled success at the beginning of the post-World War II era. Fourteen million strong in 1946, unions represented thirty five percent of non-agricultural workers. Why then did the gains made between the 1930s and the end of the war produce so few results by the 1960s? This collection addresses the history of labor in the postwar years by exploring the impact of the global contest between the United States and the Soviet Union on American workers and labor unions. The essays focus on the actual behavior of Americans in their diverse workplaces and communities during the Cold War. Where previous scholarship on labor and the Cold War has overemphasized the importance of the Communist Party, the automobile industry, and Hollywood, this book focuses on politically moderate, conservative workers and union leaders, the medium-sized cities that housed the majority of the population, and the Roman Catholic Church. These are all original essays that draw upon extensive archival research and some upon oral history sources.

Loyalty and Liberty

Author : Alex Goodall
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252095316
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Loyalty and Liberty by : Alex Goodall

Download or read book Loyalty and Liberty written by Alex Goodall and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-12-15 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Loyalty and Liberty offers the first comprehensive account of the politics of countersubversion in the United States prior to the McCarthy era. Beginning with the loyalty politics of World War I, Alex Goodall traces the course of American countersubversion as it ebbed and flowed throughout the first half of the twentieth century, culminating in the rise of McCarthyism and the Cold War. This sweeping study explores how antisubversive fervor was dampened in the 1920s in response to the excesses of World War I, transformed by the politics of antifascism in the Depression era, and rekindled in opposition to Roosevelt's ambitious New Deal policies in the later 1930s and 1940s. Identifying varied interest groups such as business tycoons, Christian denominations, and Southern Democrats, Goodall demonstrates how countersubversive politics was far from unified: groups often pursued clashing aims while struggling to balance the competing pulls of loyalty to the nation and liberty of thought, speech, and action. Meanwhile, the federal government pursued its own course, which alternately converged with and diverged from the paths followed by private organizations. By the end of World War II, alliances on the left and right had largely consolidated into the form they would keep during the Cold War. Anticommunists on the right worked to rein in the supposedly dictatorial ambitions of the Roosevelt administration, while New Deal liberals divided into several camps: the Popular Front, civil liberties activists, and embryonic Cold Warriors who struggled with how to respond to communist espionage in Washington and communist influence in politics more broadly. Rigorous in its scholarship yet accessible to a wide audience, Goodall's masterful study shows how opposition to radicalism became a defining ideological question of American life.

Habits of the Balkan Heart

Author : Stjepan Gabriel Meštrović
Publisher : Texas A&M University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780890965931
Total Pages : 204 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (659 download)

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Book Synopsis Habits of the Balkan Heart by : Stjepan Gabriel Meštrović

Download or read book Habits of the Balkan Heart written by Stjepan Gabriel Meštrović and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Almost as soon as Communism fell in Eastern Europe in 1989, Western politicians and intellectuals concluded that the West had "won" the Cold War and that liberal democracy had triumphed over authoritarianism in the world. Euphoria spread with the expectation of a New World Order. Within months, the giddy optimism began to fade, especially in the face of what soon became a brutal war in former Yugoslavia. Why did Serbia choose to replicate many of Germany's methods and aims from World Wars I and II, including ethnic cleansing (read "genocide") and a campaign to establish a Greater Serbia? Sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic, writing with Slaven Letica and Miroslav Goreta, argues that the social and political character of the Dinaric herdsmen--which dominates Serbian culture and politics, even though it is found in all Balkan nations--accounts for the form Communism took there, the fall of Communism, and the savagery and brutality of the post-Communist war. With carefully reasoned analysis, the authors show how sociological theories of social character--propounded by such thinkers as de Tocqueville, Veblen, and Bellah--can shed light on the conflicts in the Balkans, which, according to conventional wisdom, were not supposed to occur when Communism fell. They demonstrate that ancient, traditional ethnic, social, and nationalistic tendencies--"habits of the heart"--of the various people of the Balkans have taken precedence over pressures for democracy in the political and cultural vacuum left by the end of Communism in the region. Unfortunately, the difficulties in the Balkans will persist for a long time to come, and similar conflicts could break out in the former Soviet Union. This thought-provoking book has much new to say about the causes of such ethnic and class conflicts in the region, and the feasibility of policies for dealing with these sores. If democracy is to be achieved in post-Communist East Europe, the authors argue, it must be based on the "good" habits of the heart that coexist there with "bad" or authoritarian social character.

Forging American Communism

Author : Edward P. Johanningsmeier
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400863678
Total Pages : 458 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis Forging American Communism by : Edward P. Johanningsmeier

Download or read book Forging American Communism written by Edward P. Johanningsmeier and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-14 with total page 458 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A major figure in the history of twentieth-century American radicalism, William Z. Foster (1881-1961) fought his way out of the slums of turn-of-the-century Philadelphia to become a professional revolutionary as well as a notorious and feared labor agitator. Drawing on private family papers, FBI files, and recently opened Russian archives, this first full-scale biography traces Foster's early life as a world traveler, railroad worker, seaman, hobo, union activist, and radical journalist, and also probes the origins and implications of his ill-fated career as a top-echelon Communist official and three-time presidential candidate. Even though Foster's long and eventful life ended in Moscow, where he was given a state funeral in Red Square, he was, as portrayed here, a thoroughly American radical. The book not only reveals the circumstances of Foster's poverty-stricken childhood in Philadelphia, but also vividly describes his work and travels in the American West. Also included are fascinating accounts of his early political career as a Socialist, "Wobbly," and anarcho-syndicalist, and of his activities as the architect of giant organizing campaigns by the American Federation of Labor, involving hundreds of thousands of workers in the meatpacking and steel industries. The author views Foster's influence in the American Communist movement from the perspective of the history of American labor and unionism, but he also offers a realistic assessment of Foster's career in light of factional intrigues at the highest levels of the Communist International. Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

American Night

Author : Alan M. Wald
Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 0807837342
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis American Night by : Alan M. Wald

Download or read book American Night written by Alan M. Wald and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-10-15 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Night, the final volume of an unprecedented trilogy, brings Alan Wald's multigenerational history of Communist writers to a poignant climax. Using new research to explore the intimate lives of novelists, poets, and critics during the Cold War, Wald reveals a radical community longing for the rebirth of the social vision of the 1930s and struggling with a loss of moral certainty as the Communist worldview was being called into question. The resulting literature, Wald shows, is a haunting record of fracture and struggle linked by common structures of feeling, ones more suggestive of the "negative dialectics" of Theodor Adorno than the traditional social realism of the Left. Establishing new points of contact among Kenneth Fearing, Ann Petry, Alexander Saxton, Richard Wright, Jo Sinclair, Thomas McGrath, and Carlos Bulosan, Wald argues that these writers were in dialogue with psychoanalysis, existentialism, and postwar modernism, often generating moods of piercing emotional acuity and cosmic dissent. He also recounts the contributions of lesser known cultural workers, with a unique accent on gays and lesbians, secular Jews, and people of color. The vexing ambiguities of an era Wald labels "late antifascism" serve to frame an impressive collective biography.

The Communist Party of the United States

Author : Fraser M. Ottanelli
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780813516134
Total Pages : 324 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (161 download)

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Book Synopsis The Communist Party of the United States by : Fraser M. Ottanelli

Download or read book The Communist Party of the United States written by Fraser M. Ottanelli and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fraser M. Ottanelli examines the history of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) from the stock market crash to the reconstitution of the Party in 1945. He explains the appeal of the CPUSA and its emergence as the foremost vehicle of left-wing radicalism during these years. Most studies of the CPUSA have focused on either the grass-roots activities of the Party's members or the Party's relations with the Communist International in Moscow. For the first time, Ottanelli explores in depth the subtle and intricate interaction between these two levels. During the '30s and '40s, the policies of the CPUSA were influenced as much by the Party's involvement in national social and labor struggles as they were by Moscow. Party leaders attempted to set policy that would be relevant to American society. Ottanelli looks at the Party's domestic policies and activities concerning labor, race, youth, the unemployed, as well as the Party's changing attitude toward FDR and the New Deal, its policies in foreign affairs, and war-time activities. For most of the period under study, Communists increased in strength, influence, relative acceptance, and their ability to make significant contributions to labor and social struggles. Ottanelli attributes these accomplishments to the Party's search for policies, language, and organizational forms that would adapt radicalism to the unique political, social, and cultural environment of the United States.

Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition

Author : Griffin Fariello
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 0393346412
Total Pages : 580 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (933 download)

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Book Synopsis Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition by : Griffin Fariello

Download or read book Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition written by Griffin Fariello and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2008-12-01 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A remarkable document of an era that permanently changed the American political landscape.

History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out

Author : James R. Barrett
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822372851
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out by : James R. Barrett

Download or read book History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out written by James R. Barrett and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In History from the Bottom Up and the Inside Out James R. Barrett rethinks the boundaries of American social and labor history by investigating the ways in which working-class, radical, and immigrant people's personal lives intersected with their activism and religious, racial, ethnic, and class identities. Concerned with carving out space for individuals in the story of the working class, Barrett examines all aspects of individuals' subjective experiences, from their personalities, relationships, and emotions to their health and intellectual pursuits. Barrett's subjects include American communists, "blue-collar cosmopolitans"—such as well-read and well-traveled porters, sailors, and hoboes—and figures in early twentieth-century anarchist subculture. He also details the process of the Americanization of immigrant workers via popular culture and their development of class and racial identities, asking how immigrants learned to think of themselves as white. Throughout, Barrett enriches our understanding of working people’s lives, making it harder to objectify them as nameless cogs operating within social and political movements. In so doing, he works to redefine conceptions of work, migration, and radical politics.

Red Chicago

Author : Randi Storch
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252032063
Total Pages : 322 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Red Chicago by : Randi Storch

Download or read book Red Chicago written by Randi Storch and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Realities of the street-level American Communist experience during the worst years of the Depression "Red Chicago" is a social history of American Communism set within the context of Chicago's neighborhoods, industries, and radical traditions. Using local party records, oral histories, union records, party newspapers, and government documents, Randi Storch fills the gap between Leninist principles and the day-to-day activities of Chicago's rank-and-file Communists. Uncovering rich new evidence from Moscow's former party archive, Storch argues that although the American Communist Party was an international organization strongly influenced by the Soviet Union, at the city level it was a more vibrant and flexible organization responsible to local needs and concerns. Thus, while working for a better welfare system, fairer unions, and racial equality, Chicago's Communists created a movement that at times departed from international party leaders' intentions. By focusing on the experience of Chicago's Communists, who included a large working-class, African American, and ethnic population, this study reexamines party members' actions as an integral part of the communities in which they lived and the industries where they worked. "A volume in the series The Working Class in American History, edited by David Brody, Alice Kessler-Harris, David Montgomery, and Sean Wilentz"

A Hard Journey

Author : James J. Lorence
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252032314
Total Pages : 346 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis A Hard Journey by : James J. Lorence

Download or read book A Hard Journey written by James J. Lorence and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Hard Journey brings to life Don West: poet, ordained Congregationalist minister, labor organizer, educator, leftist activist, and one of the most important literary and political figures in the southern Appalachians during the middle years of the twentieth century. Initially motivated by religious conviction and driven by a vision of an open, democratic, and nonracist society, West was also a passionate advocate for the region's traditional values. This biography balances his literary work with political and educational activities, placing West's poetry in the context of his fight for social justice and racial equality. James J. Lorence uses previously unexamined sources to explore West's early involvement in organizing miners and other workers for the Socialist and Communist Parties during the 1930s. In documenting West's lifetime commitment to creating a nonracist, egalitarian South, A Hard Journey furnishes the spotlight he deserves as a pioneering figure in twentieth-century Southern radicalism.

An Unrepentant Liberal

Author : Marc Karson
Publisher : Xlibris Corporation
ISBN 13 : 1524532606
Total Pages : 667 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (245 download)

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Book Synopsis An Unrepentant Liberal by : Marc Karson

Download or read book An Unrepentant Liberal written by Marc Karson and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2017-01-20 with total page 667 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Unrepentant Liberal is a book of writings by an American professor of political science over a particular period of history. It includes an introduction by the author, who envisaged this book in his lifetime. Unfortunately, he died before its completion. There is, in addition, a preface by Ann Karson, his widow. This book contains a chapter from Dr Karsons major work, American Labor Unions and Politics, 1900-1918, and one from a previous writing on which it was based. Among other things, these and some of his scholarly articles and reviews about American labor tell of the discovery for which he is known, that the influence of Roman Catholicism should be added to previously noted factors accounting for the relative conservatism of American unions and the absence of a Labor Party in the United States. American labor in the early 20th Century was his research specialty. Other articles and reviews concern aspects of American government and politics, on which he regularly taught, and world affairs, as well as health issues and education. Topics include race relations, civil liberties, religion, socialism, the left, the right and foreign affairs.

James and Esther Cooper Jackson

Author : Sara Rzeszutek
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
ISBN 13 : 0813166276
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (131 download)

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Book Synopsis James and Esther Cooper Jackson by : Sara Rzeszutek

Download or read book James and Esther Cooper Jackson written by Sara Rzeszutek and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson grew up understanding that opportunities came differently for blacks and whites, men and women, rich and poor. In turn, they devoted their lives to the fight for equality, serving as career activists throughout the black freedom movement. Having grown up in Virginia during the depths of the Great Depression, the Jacksons also saw a path to racial equality through the Communist Party. This choice in political affiliation would come to shape and define not only their participation in the black freedom movement but also the course of their own marriage as the Cold War years unfolded. In this dual biography, Sara Rzeszutek examines the couple's political involvement as well as the evolution of their personal and public lives in the face of ever-shifting contexts. She documents the Jacksons' significant contributions to the early civil rights movement, discussing their time leading the Southern Negro Youth Congress, which laid the groundwork for youth activists in the 1960s; their numerous published writings in periodicals such as Political Affairs; and their editorial involvement in The Worker and the civil rights magazine Freedomways. Drawing upon a rich collection of correspondence, organizational literature, and interviews with the Jacksons themselves, Haviland follows the couple through the years as they bore witness to economic inequality, war, political oppression, and victory in the face of injustice. Her study reveals a portrait of a remarkable pair who lived during a transformative period of American history and whose story offers a vital narrative of persistence, love, and activism across the long arc of the black freedom movement.

Standing Against Dragons

Author : Sarah Hart Brown
Publisher : LSU Press
ISBN 13 : 0807140198
Total Pages : 337 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Standing Against Dragons by : Sarah Hart Brown

Download or read book Standing Against Dragons written by Sarah Hart Brown and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2000-03 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standing Against Dragons examines the careers of three exceptional lawyers who championed civil liberties and fought for civil rights in the two decades after World War II. John Coe of Pensacola, Florida, Clifford Durr of Montgomery, Alabama, and Benjamin Smith of New Orleans became southern dissenters, resisting both the excessive zeal of the anti-Communist right and southern segregation laws. Coe, Durr, and Smith all appeared with their clients in the much-publicized 1954 investigation of the Southern Conference Educational Fund and defended persons subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Coe represented the ardent integrationist who was the last man indicted for contempt by the HUAC, and Smith's offices were raided in 1963 as a result of his civil rights work in Mississippi. Despite personal and political differences, these men remained committed civil libertarians in this era of repression. While formally rejecting Communism -- defending freedom of expression and association in almost every instance -- these advocates, in practice, disavowed individualism in favor of the common good and feared the oppression of unbridled government. Consequently they faced professional scorn, personal ostracism, and official harassment. Sarah Hart Brown's astute analysis reveals the wide range of southern political ideas and defines the positions of southern liberals and radicals in the broader stream of American liberalism during the postwar period.

When the Old Left was Young

Author : Robert Cohen
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN 13 : 0195111362
Total Pages : 455 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (951 download)

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Book Synopsis When the Old Left was Young by : Robert Cohen

Download or read book When the Old Left was Young written by Robert Cohen and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1993 with total page 455 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American college students during the Age of Roosevelt confronted two of the gravest crises in the twentieth century: the Great Depression and the growing international tensions that ultimately led to World War II. These crises generated more idealism than despair, politicizing undergraduates, who built the first mass student movement in American history. Led by leftists, this movement responded to the crisis in international relations by organizing national student strikes against war and fascism - which at their height in the mid-1930s mobilized almost half of the undergraduate population in the United States. While battling for peace in the international arena, the student movement responded to the Depression in America by waging a war on poverty. The movement championed a broader and more egalitarian vision of the welfare state than that of the New Dealers. Demanding "scholarships not battleships," Depression-era student activists pushed for federal educational funding and job programs for all needy young Americans. The student movement tested the limits of free speech on campus. Anti-radical college administrators sought to suppress the movement, provoking major battles over political expression. Though Depression-era student protests were almost always nonviolent and lawful, college administrators nonetheless turned over confidential information about their activist students to the Federal Bureau of Investigation - abrogating the First Amendment rights of these young activists. When the Old Left Was Young offers the first comprehensive history of the Depression-era student movement and its activism on behalf of peace, social justice, and free speech. The study explores the role that radicals - and particularly Communists - played in launching and leading the movement. Avoiding the polemics of Cold War-era historiography, When the Old Left Was Young presents Communist students in all their complexity; they emerge on these pages as idealistic champions of egalitarian social change, but also as manipulative political organizers whose eagerness to serve as apologists for the U.S.S.R. ultimately destroyed the student movement in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet pact and the Soviet invasion of Finland. Based upon sources generally ignored by political historians, including student newspapers, university records, FBI documents, and interviews with movement leaders, this book offers new insights into American political life during the Depression era. Revealing fascinating individual stories in this history of student insurgency, When the Old Left Was Young will be of key interest to readers concerned with the history of American education, youth, radicalism, free speech, U.S. and Soviet foreign policy, race relations, and the Great Depression.